Pay to Play? Over Half of People with Access to Secretary of State Clinton were Foundation Donors!

It’s time for the team Clinton to start talking about the AP being part of the right wing conspiracy because they can count. According to the Associated Press more than half of the people (85 of 154) outside of any government who had in-person or phone access to Hillary Clinton while she was running the State Dept gave money to the Clinton Foundation either personally or through companies or groups

Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.

The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.

Before the liberals can start screaming there is no evidence of a quid pro quo, allow me to suggest they are very wrong. This is Washington D.C., the seat of the most powerful government in the world. The prize is not gold or money in most cases. The most valuable thing inside the beltway is access. Even in cases when the visitor’s request is rejected by the Secretary, the fact that the Clinton Foundation was able to sell access to Hillary, guarantees continued money to the Foundation and of course Bubba and Hillary also…